Authors: Lawrence Sanders,Vincent Lardo
McNally's Dare (35 page)
Finally, an intelligent word from a man who is long on the commodity. “I have, Sergeant, which is why I connived an independent search of the house. However, that doesn’t mean much because some of these mansions contain secret nooks and crannies like hidden closets along the back stairs where the master of the house could hide, if necessary, when on his way to the servant’s quarters for a bit of hanky-panky with the parlor maid.”
Eberhart whistled through his teeth, greener than ever.
“What’s this goal thing?” one of the patrolman asked.
“An enclosed area, except for the entrance, in the center of the maze,” I told him. “The purpose of a maze is to hunt for it. It’s called making the goal.”
“Okay. Now let’s all go hunt for Mrs. Hayes,” Eberhart ordered. Having gotten all the facts, and not sure what he was getting himself into, Eberhart led us back to the great room where all were assembled—silent, morose and irritable. After introducing himself, Eberhart informed the group, “Mr. McNally has filled us in, but before I begin a formal investigation I want to know what the search parties have found.”
“They’ve found nothing,” Hayes called out from the dais where he was sitting, not standing, with Tilly and Lolly.
“We searched the house,” Laddy Taylor claimed. “From the attic to the lower level and both were locked from the outside but we looked anyway. Nothing.”
“And nothing outside, Lieutenant,” Mack Macurdy offered.
“Did you search the maze?” Eberhart asked.
Hayes jumped onto the drum and hawked, “Why the hell should they look there? We were all over the maze. How could she have gotten in it? How could she have gotten downstairs without being seen?”
“He doesn’t want us to search the maze,” Al Rogoff, who was standing behind me, whispered in my ear.
I glanced at Eberhart and he gave me a nod.
“You searched the attic, Mr. Hayes, when you told us yourself that it would have been impossible for Mrs. Hayes to enter it and leave the door locked from the outside,” I called to him.
“So what the hell does that prove?” he bellowed right back.
“It doesn’t prove a thing,” I said, “but that the lieutenant wants to be just as thorough in his investigation as you were with yours.”
Eberhart immediately backed me up with, “Everything about your wife’s disappearance is a mystery, to say the least. You said it was impossible for her to leave the second floor without being seen, but she did. Now you tell us it’s impossible for her to be hiding in the maze, but she may well be. How do you get out back?”
Hayes leaped off the drum like a performing monkey and raced to the French doors. He opened one and stepped onto the terrace, followed by Eberhart, the officers and me. Our audience soon began opening the other doors and cautiously inching their way onto the terrace. Hayes scooted onto the lawn and then to the entrance of the maze where he fiddled with something hidden in one of the hedges. A moment later the floodlights came on and we were looking across the top of the maze, a sea of greenery for as far as the eye could see.
It was, besides awesome, a tad eerie.
“Some piece of work,” Eberhart mumbled, starting for the entrance.
“It’s a fool’s errand,” Hayes groused.
“Then fools we’ll be,” Eberhart said, sounding as excited as a kid entering the house of horrors at a theme park. “Can you take us straight to the goal?”
Hayes got out his map of the grid. “Follow me, if you must.”
Eberhart turned to his men. “You all spread out and check the pathways, and don’t follow us.”
“I wish you luck,” I called to Al as he and the others entered the maze.
Eberhart and I followed Hayes who sped through the aisles like a mouse who had mastered the labyrinth and knew just where to find his reward. Along the way we crossed paths with the meandering officers several times. I gave Al a wink and he gave me the finger.
Hayes finally came to a halt by a cut in the hedge. “The goal,” he announced, stepping back to allow Eberhart and me to enter.
In the artificial light the sundial’s face appeared to be grinning at us. Lying at its base was Marlena Marvel. She appeared to be quite dead.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
The publisher and the estate of Lawrence Sanders have chosen Vincent Lardo to create this novel based on Lawrence Sanders’s beloved character Archy McNally and his fictional world.
copyright © 2003 by Lawrence A. Sanders Enterprises, Inc.
cover design by Jason Gabbert
978-1-4532-9834-3
This edition published in 2013 by Open Road Integrated Media
345 Hudson Street
New York, NY 10014
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